ABSTRACT
I npatient psychiatric care has undergone profound changes in the last few decades. The average length for an inpatient hospital stay in the United States decreased from 25 days in 1990 to 10 days in 2000 (Lave, 2003). To qualify for inpatient level of care, patients must suffer from severe psychiatric symptoms with behavioral dysregulation, show significant deficits in self-care and independent functioning, be a danger to self or others, or require complex medication adjustments. Inpatients are more likely to meet criteria for multiple disorders and often have major co-morbid physical illnesses (Miller, Dasher, Collins, Griffiths, & Brown, 2001). With increased patient complexity and decreased time for treatment comes a need for rapid and efficient assessment procedures capable of providing reliable information across multiple domains. As such, inpatient programs are increasingly relying upon multi-scaled self-report instruments like the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI; Morey 1991, 2007) to meet this need (Marlowe & Wetzler, 1994).
